How long does day 2 of the 30-day challenge take?

About five minutes of hands-on work against the org you picked on day one, plus two or three minutes of reading. If you are short on time the exercise alone still delivers the day's point.

Do I need any tools or paid data for contributor diversity?

No. Every exercise in the challenge runs on public GitHub data and a browser. The feed that automates the same checks is available, but the curriculum itself is deliberately tool-free so the habit lands before the tooling.

What if I miss a day of the 30-day deal flow challenge?

Every day is permanent at its own URL, so you can pick up exactly where you stopped. The sequence matters, each day builds on the previous one's artifact, but the pace is yours.

2 / 30

Week 1, Learn · Day 2 of 30

Day 2: Contributor diversity

The bus-factor signal, Gini coefficient at month -3.

Day 2 in one paragraph: In the panel of 219 funded rounds, startups that closed had a contributor-diversity Gini of ~0.34 at month -3. Startups that did not close had ~0.61. More distributed codebases close more rounds. You will spend about five minutes, end with a concrete artifact, and the whole curriculum stays free at this URL permanently.

Where this day sits in the 30

Week 1 teaches the six atomic signals one at a time, each on the org you picked on day one. Day 2 of 30 sits 7% of the way through, in week 1, learn, one of four one-week phases. This day also carries a bonus exercise for anyone with extra time. Everything in this challenge is built from public GitHub signals, the same data that powers the weekly deal-flow feed, and the day's lesson is worth roughly €79 in equivalent consulting time by the anchoring we use across the curriculum.

Yesterday

Yesterday you read commit velocity. Today's signal layers on top: even sharp acceleration concentrated in one committer is a different bet than sharp acceleration spread across four.

Why this signal matters

In the panel of 219 funded rounds, startups that closed had a contributor-diversity Gini of ~0.34 at month -3. Startups that did not close had ~0.61. More distributed codebases close more rounds.

The 5-minute exercise

1Open the org's most-active repo.
2Click Insights → Contributors. Set the date range to the last 90 days.
3Count: how many contributors have ≥10 commits over 90 days?
4Look at the top contributor's share. Is it > 50% of total commits? > 80%?

What you’re filtering for

A team where the top contributor is <50% of the volume and at least 4 people have 10+ commits. That's a real engineering team. Anything else is one founder with a side project, or a consultancy.

Edge case

Mono-repo orgs concentrate everything in one repo and look more diverse than they are. Cross-check with the org-level contributor list at github.com/orgs/[org]/people if it's public.

Bonus

A single-bus-factor codebase means the round is essentially funding one person's salary. A 4-person codebase is funding a team. The contract value, the dilution math, and the diligence story are all different.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow: the dependents graph, who's already building on top of this startup's code.

Common questions about day 2

How long does day 2 take?: About five minutes of hands-on work against the org you picked on day one. The reading adds another two or three. If you are short on time the exercise alone still delivers the day's point.
Do I need any tools or paid data for contributor diversity?: No. Every exercise in the challenge runs on public GitHub data and a browser. The feed that automates the same checks is available, but the curriculum itself is deliberately tool-free so the habit lands before the tooling.
What if I miss a day?: Every day is permanent at its own URL, so you can pick up exactly where you stopped. The sequence matters, each day builds on the previous one's artifact, but the pace is yours. Many people run the 30 days across six or seven weeks instead of four.

Curriculum: /challenge · Methodology: /methodology · Paper: ssrn.com/abstract=6606558